Home
by Sora G. Silverwind
Summary: Sheba only wants to go home. This palace, this glorified prison, is not her home.


**Home****  
by Sora G. Silverwind**

**Summary****: Sheba only wants to go home. This palace, this glorified prison, is not her home.**

**Rating****: PG.**

**Author's notes****: My mind has been too scattered lately to write actual prose, so you get poetry instead. The Gods help us all.**

**Disclaimer****: Golden Sun owns, yadda yadda, can I have GS3 next year for Christmas if I'm a good girl?**

**Special thanks to****: Insomnia and my own strange personality.**

O-O-O

Sheba only wants to go home.

This palace, this glorified prison, is not her home.  
No matter how sweet the words spoken,  
how gilded the promises made,  
Lord Babi can never hope to match the fatherly love  
That burns in a single scolding from Faran.

Her holding cell dwarfs her entire house.  
Luxury and excess permeate even to the cracks  
in the floorboards; what little dust there is  
(in the ceiling eaves, behind the wardrobe)  
is far too good for the likes of her –

The divine child of enslaved Lalivero.

Sheba sleeps under a down-stuffed comforter of finest silk.  
But she longs for her own tattered blanket:  
hand-quilted by her mother Rumiyah  
with that odd lump of shredded yarn in one corner  
and blue flowers where there should be pink in the pattern.

The meals given even to a prisoner like her  
Are delicious with exotic spices, though nothing  
Will make Sheba admit it aloud.  
Still, she speaks truth when she declares that  
She'd rather have Faran's humble pork hock stew any day.

Her heart hungers for familiarity.

She tastes it, almost, when she meets  
A young boy her age, blond and slender like herself,  
his aura resonating with hers like similar notes  
plucked on a well-tuned lute.  
But a hand slaps across the strings –

And the song dies before it ever lives.

-

Sheba is headed home now.

She takes no souvenirs with her but the tales of her trials.  
Her companions are Babi's best guards,  
more silent than stones and just as rough.  
But it doesn't matter, because soon  
She will live her own life again.

In the middle of the desert, _they_ strike as fast  
As the sandstorms they've extinguished with calming water.  
The guards rally around her, fencing her in.  
Sheba zaps one with her powers, and when he folds over in pain  
she leaps for freedom.

She would rather die running with the wind.

But he blocks her way like a looming cliff:  
tall, dark, built – her complete opposite.  
Sheba lashes out at him, but he dodges,  
and in a flash of golden light  
her arms and legs are trapped in terran bonds.

The Elements bless her, she fights the unfightable –  
as do the guards that Babi had entrusted with her care.  
But they are no match for the two dragon-humans  
who breathe upon them with unnatural flame;  
no match for the water mage who can pierce through with only an icicle.

"You will not be harmed," the one before her says.

Sheba looks up at him, eyes wide.  
Gently, he places a gloved hand upon her shoulder for comfort.  
The simple touch opens the widest of channels,  
and his story and emotions spill into her, filling her up  
until she can see nothing but the burden of his unwanted fate.

And she believes, because she cannot do anything else.

-

It all seems so long ago to her now.

Her capture by Lord Babi was two weeks ago;  
her fall from Venus Lighthouse, perhaps a day.  
Still those memories feel like barely-remembered  
Past life experiences, only clear to her  
When she thinks back upon them, coaxing them into clarity.

"We should be near Daila now," Kraden says, more resilient  
than his age would imply, like a weathered weeping willow.  
He radiates wisdom and empathy.  
Sheba has cried into his scholar's robes more than once,  
finding the Faran in him buried under the years.

At Kraden's side, Jenna bubbles with encouraging words.

Sheba shivers, the chill of the sea soaked into her skin,  
but Jenna's smile warms her soul,  
as does the hug that Felix suddenly gives her.  
He stinks of sweat, and earth, and sea salt,  
but she dares not contemplate her own stench.

Their situation is set up like a cosmic joke:  
three teenagers and an elderly scholar set adrift on a broken island,  
needing to save themselves before they can save the world.  
Cut off from civilization after surviving chaos,  
Sheba only feels that much more connected to those around her.

For now, she is home.

O-O-O

**Review if you will, flame if you must.**

**-Sora G. Silverwind**_**  
I'm falling forever**_


End file.
